Challenge Summary
Welcome to the “TaaS Community Profile Design Challenge”! We have been very proud of the reception of our Talent as a Service platform from our community and clients, since we launched. We are always looking to iterate our platforms and expand the reach of our audience. In this challenge, we are looking to re-design what our TaaS candidate profiles will look like for our clients.
Challenge Objectives
We need our TaaS profiles to highlight the technical and general strengths of a candidate, while being easy to discern the differences in candidates, for anyone in a client’s organization that may be looking at TaaS profiles. The goal is to have the profiles be
Project Background
Those that may look at a potential topcoder member for a TaaS engagement may be a non-technical/HR type person, and the feedback we’ve gotten from our clients is that the layout of the profiles can be improved. The goal is for all users in a client’s organizations to be able to view a TaaS candidate’s profile and understand their strengths immediately, without doubts.
- The purpose of this project is to come up with layouts of a TaaS profile that easily highlight a candidate’s specialties, skills, qualifications, and uniqueness
- Show how good a member is in as few words as possible
- This design will be used by the Topcoder sales team
Design Problem
Think about the challenge that an HR professional at a corporation faces, with or without a technical background, when looking at a pool of candidates. Deciding each candidate’s pros and cons is often challenging and subjective. The ability to know exact, quantifiable differences between candidates is crucial.
We are currently using this slide, but we want to make it better (Do not copy! - use your creativity to design something better). Along with the slide layout, we want to have the ability to present in a document format, for Topcoder’s sales team to show how prolific and dynamic our TaaS community is to our clients.
Some possible design recommendations we’ve been thinking about, to improve our profiles:
Not all of these points need to be addressed in your submission. These are a just list of some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve been trying to implement into our profiles.
On an even higher level of solving this design challenge, other questions that may be worth thinking about, that the profiles help cover:
Beyond the design scope of this challenge, each profile should contain the following pieces of data:
Keep in mind to use the space you have efficiently and create a good content hierarchy. It’s important that the information is easy to read and scan for! The content should also be easy to update by a person who is not a designer.
Note: when creating these TaaS profiles, we are looking to pull as much data as possible from existing Topcoder profiles (so they are easy to implement by our developers).
Size:
Branding Guidelines
Judging Criteria
Stock Photography and Icons
Final Deliverables
Challenge Objectives
We need our TaaS profiles to highlight the technical and general strengths of a candidate, while being easy to discern the differences in candidates, for anyone in a client’s organization that may be looking at TaaS profiles. The goal is to have the profiles be
- 1 page design for TaaS profile
- 2 formats: google slide layout and 1 page resume
- Immediately recognizable what the strengths of a candidate are
Round 1
Submit your initial designs and concepts for checkpoint review:- 1 mock profile in Google Slide layout and 1 mock profile in a one page document format
Round 2
Submit your final designs for round 2 and checkpoint updates as per feedback:- 1 mock profile in Google Slide layout and 1 mock profile in a one page document format
Project Background
Those that may look at a potential topcoder member for a TaaS engagement may be a non-technical/HR type person, and the feedback we’ve gotten from our clients is that the layout of the profiles can be improved. The goal is for all users in a client’s organizations to be able to view a TaaS candidate’s profile and understand their strengths immediately, without doubts.
- The purpose of this project is to come up with layouts of a TaaS profile that easily highlight a candidate’s specialties, skills, qualifications, and uniqueness
- Show how good a member is in as few words as possible
- This design will be used by the Topcoder sales team
Design Problem
Think about the challenge that an HR professional at a corporation faces, with or without a technical background, when looking at a pool of candidates. Deciding each candidate’s pros and cons is often challenging and subjective. The ability to know exact, quantifiable differences between candidates is crucial.
We are currently using this slide, but we want to make it better (Do not copy! - use your creativity to design something better). Along with the slide layout, we want to have the ability to present in a document format, for Topcoder’s sales team to show how prolific and dynamic our TaaS community is to our clients.
Some possible design recommendations we’ve been thinking about, to improve our profiles:
- It may make more sense for our clients to have the candidates’ skills grouped per designation, at a higher level. Examples such as full stack developer/front end/back end/quality assurance/design/data science. Having this sort of high level skillset, with the amount of years worked in that field, and with what exact skills in that designation that the candidate has worked with.
- What a hiring manager may want from a candidate is to know immediately, “I want a back end developer with 5 years of experience and skills in X, Y, and Z.”
- Does the profile quickly provide that information?
- Instead of alphabetizing each of a candidate’s skills, how can the top skills, and the associated amount of experience, be easily highlighted on a profile? It would be more helpful if the highest rated skills were shown first, whether in a higher level designation, or even beyond the designation, in the rest of a candidate’s profile.
- An identifier on the profile as a TaaS member and a TaaS Rating
- What recognition can be given to a candidate from past Topcoder customers who have hired the candidate? A simple badge as recognition from different big name customers could be helpful to empower the members, as well as being part of the Topcoder Open.
- We can even include TaaS accomplishments and list previous TaaS projects the member was part of, as well as for projects within Topcoder Community and Connect -- e.g. “prototyper and the selling one, for customers “front end dev” as the TC experience is backing up the outside/ customer naming.”
Not all of these points need to be addressed in your submission. These are a just list of some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve been trying to implement into our profiles.
On an even higher level of solving this design challenge, other questions that may be worth thinking about, that the profiles help cover:
- How would we easily explain the Topcoder ranking to someone unfamiliar?
- When are ratings more important than skills? And when are skills more important than ratings?
- Some of the best competitors likely are good at everything, despite not having the one piece of obscure technology that isn't on their profile.
- If a recruiter is reviewing a pool of 50 TaaS candidates, what would you, a member of our Topcoder community, recommend as the most important piece of information in assessing a candidate? Does your layout easily highlight this piece of data?
Beyond the design scope of this challenge, each profile should contain the following pieces of data:
- Member handle and name
- Country (+flag)
- Member since info
- Relevant skills for the asked opportunity - like isf customers are looking for Java developers, that should be clearly seen in their profile
- Skills: most important 5 skills should be shown with related years of experience and they should be sorted from high to low. The rest of the skills a member have can be simple listed without years.
- Show if a member is Designer, Developer, Data Scientist, etc. Some people can have 2 roles.
- Work experience and education
- Statistics such a: total challenges, total wins, win percentage
- Rating: either a red member, blue, green - rating matters to point to customers that our members are top 10% best of the community for example. No need to show a visual representation, but say what it means to our community
- Paragraph blurb about the member - personalization (optional field)
- TCO finalist badge (optional field)
- Badges: NDA (for challenge), Trulioo(verified member) (optional field)
Keep in mind to use the space you have efficiently and create a good content hierarchy. It’s important that the information is easy to read and scan for! The content should also be easy to update by a person who is not a designer.
Note: when creating these TaaS profiles, we are looking to pull as much data as possible from existing Topcoder profiles (so they are easy to implement by our developers).
Size:
- Google Slide page: 1600 px x 900 px (you can download this as PPT and submit it and also send us the link to the google slide)
- A4 document 1 page in Word/PDF format
Branding Guidelines
- The presentation should follow the Topcoder branding. The style should follow the new Topcoder site look and feel, while keeping content well organized
- Fonts: use only Roboto (regular text) and Barlow Condensed (headings) fonts
- Here you can find the Topcoder logo
- The Topcoder logo should be neatly watermarked on a corner of the profile
Judging Criteria
- How easy is it to scan a profile and understand how good a member is?
- How easy to code your design is (pull data from profiles)
- Hierarchy and lisibility of information
- How exciting does your presentation looks
Stock Photography and Icons
- Topcoder icons will be shared on forums (only use Streamline icons set)
- Topcoder photos should be taken from member’s profiles or Topcoder Flickr album
Final Deliverables
- Source.zip – All original source files.
- Submission.zip – PNG/JPG files
- Preview.png – Your preview image
- Declarations.txt – All your declarations and notes
Please read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. It is important that you monitor any updates provided by the client or Studio Admins in the forums. Please post any questions you might have for the client in the forums.